Beginner's Guide to Infinity Wars

By -
February 6, 2014

Infinity Wars can be rather intimidating to a new player first getting started in the game, but fear not! Here you will find a break down on all major aspects of the game and a collection of knowledge to get yourself a head start.

When you start Infinity Wars you are absolutely flooded with questions and can be sent to all four corners of the internet to find answers to them. Here I tried to gather up all that information, as well as condense it down so that a new player can digest it more easily. Below you will find information on how basic deck building works, how to get new cards, what exactly can you get out of Rift Runs and more!

The Factions

This game boasts seven card sets called Factions. Each of the sets provides a different style of gameplay for players and challenges you to find a powerful solution amidst the many different ways you can combine these factions into your deck. An interesting note is that the game already provides a bit of lore behind these factions and some cards even go further with flavor text to further your dedication to a certain faction.

Flame Dawn

Plays more aggressively by attacking early and often for early game dominance.

Has a full army of weaker characters that are meant to swarm the field.

Provides utility abilities that are designed to temporarily disrupt the enemy’s field.

Genesis Industries

Access to a lot of cheap characters that are meant for late game building.

The characters are built off of one another to make a few hard-hitters.

Provides a nice mix between utility and damage abilities.

The Warpath

All about the raw power that typically shines in midgame.

Most characters typically don’t do anything fancy. They hit hard and withstand some punishment.

Abilities follow the idea of the characters: big moves that hit your opponent hard and require them to adjust around you.

The Cult of Verore

Uses a lot of control and character building to dominate the late game.

Characters typically build up over time through killing characters or using abilities.

Abilities are typically all about direct damage or direct character removal.

Descendants of the Dragon

Plays defensive and goes for a moral win that usually runs mid to late game.

Characters are usually all low power and high health with the intent to play mainly in the defensive zone.

Abilities are meant to either give you more time to achieve that late game goal, or to give you a slight boost for a strong attack to moral.

Sleepers of Avarrach

Follows an intense slow building force that manipulates your graveyard and your opponent’s creatures. Shines in mid to late game.

Characters tend to either help you abuse your graveyard, or help you take control of enemy characters by turning them Undead on your field.

Abilities maintain the theme of the Sleepers. Abuse your graveyard or take characters from your opponent.

The Exiles

Shines through sacrifice of your characters and killing your enemy’s characters to build your forces. Can be intense in the early game, then come back in the late game with a second intense assault.

Characters usually involve sacrifices in order to really shine in their abilities.

Exile Abilities are meant to interrupt the cadence of your opponent by forcing them to sacrifice or interrupting their attack and defense strategies.

It's important to say here that the entirety of Exiles has been reworked and the changes will likely be implemented after the Infestation expansion set has been launched.

Teremus, the Community Manager for Infinity Wars, told us: Just know that we spent a lot of time with the Council (their QA team) and what we came up with is still chaotic, but a solid concept that works with multiple splashes and builds to create a faction that is competitively viable. Just a fully playable faction rather than it's too chaotic form currently with no synergy anywhere.

Cards

Each card has basic characteristics that we will cover here and get you a basic understanding on how to read each card.

Character Cards

Some cards will be defined as "Unique Characters". You can only have one of these cards out on the field.

Ability Cards

These cards are just use and discard for some quick damage on an opponent, clearing out creatures or some other utility.

Location Cards

These will add an effect to the field that you generally pay some resource to reap some benefit.

Artifact Cards

Artifacts are very similar to Location cards. Generally they change, or add a rule, to the game for whoever plays it.

Unique Cards

Unique Characters cannot be played if you have another Unique Character with the same name on the field, though you can have more than one copy of a unique character.

Unique Ability Cards are cards that are considered so potent that you cannot play another ability with the same name if it is in your graveyard. For instance if you have a Calamity in your graveyard, you cannot play a Calamity from your hand.

Decks

When getting to the point when you want to make a deck, or alter one of the starter decks from the campaign, you will get a full grasp on how the decks work in this game. Here is where Infinity Wars does something rather different that I haven't encountered in a TCG before:

When you make a deck you need to decide on three Commanders. These Commanders can be any creature from any faction, including creatures without a faction. The Purity Rating of your deck will be determined by the three Commanders that you choose. The Purity Rating will help define what tier of Purity a card you can play.

The deck itself can be 40 cards or more. Your deck can only have 3 identical cards in it; unless the card is defined as "Unlimited" in which case you can have as many as you want. Good deck building strategy tends to have a 40-50 card deck, and limits the amount of identical Unlimited cards in your deck to about three to eight.

Of course how you build up this deck is ultimately up to your play style, but at the very least it's considered a good idea (with few exceptions) to run a multi-faction deck.

Getting Started

When starting the game it is highly recommended to complete all the Campaign paths to get yourself introduced to all the basics and a solid collection of cards. By the end of the campaign you should have 3,000 Infinity Points (IP) and 6 or 7 Core Booster Packs under your belt. From there it becomes about playing games with other players and learning from them to understand what does and doesn't work, and why they do or don't.

Getting Cards

Currently there are 220 cards in the game and the next expansion will bring an additional 100 cards. With so many cards it just begs the question of how do you get more?

Leveling

Well first off there is a level system in the game in which there is a level tied to your account, and a level tied to each of the individual factions. Each time you play a match you gain over-all experience (typically 250 or 500 depending on win or loss) and then that experience is divvied to your factions depending on the purity of your deck.

Based on getting 500 experience in a game:

A single Faction deck (3 Purity) will get 498 experience towards their faction.

A dual Faction deck (2/1 Purity) will get 332 experience towards their dominant faction, and 166 experience towards their other faction.

A triple Faction deck (1/1/1 Purity) will get 166 experience towards each faction.

Each time you level up your faction you get faction relevant cards and each time you level up your account you get a 15-card Core Booster Pack.

A player-made list of what cards that are obtainable can be found here.

Purchasing

As you play the game you will get IP in small increments after each match based on the time you played and if you won or not. 150 IP is the typical amount to receive in optimal conditions from a standard constructed match.

On top of this you can purchase in-game currency called Lightmare Points (LP) for $1.00 AUD (which is about 0.80 USD) through PayPal currently; although, they plan to make use of the Steam wallet when they are accepted into Steam within the first quarter of this year.

These two currencies are both used to purchase booster packs, decks, and even pre-purchase future expansion packs.

Lightmare Points
(USD)

Infinity Points

Blister Pack

60 (~$0.45)

1,050

Collection Starter Pack

600 (~$3.90)

-

15-Card Booster Packs

300 (~$3)

5,250

Decks

750 (~$4.80)

12,950

Pre-Order

300 (~$3)

5,050

Typically the best IP purchase is the 15-card Rise Booster Pack. The campaign and the level rewards all give you Core 2013 cards. Rise is what any new player is lacking.

The Field

Below we break down the field of play to easily digest what is going on and what it all means.

The Options button. This allows you to adjust the settings of the game or to forfeit if things are going poorly.

The Initiative marker. Initiative is an important aspect in this game because everything technically happens "at the same time" each turn, and Initiative allows a player to have their effects go off first. Keep an eye on this in particular, as some power plays can be done dependent on who has Initiative. Here are the actions that occur that involve Initiative, in order:

Any 'comes into play' effects will trigger in initiative order.

Pre-emptive abilities and card effects trigger in initiative order, in the order they were planned.

Character actions and Ability cards trigger in initiative order, in the order they were planned.

Combat resolves left to right in Initiative order per combat rules.

Resource total. Each turn you get another Resource, up to ten (with exceptions dependent on cards), that you spend on cards.

Amount of cards you and your opponent have.

End Turn button.

The Graveyard. Most cards that are destroyed, discarded or used end up here.

The Deck. The number on it lists how many cards are left in the deck. If you cannot draw anymore cards from your deck you will lose 10 morale at the beginning of the turn.

The Support Zone. Typically all characters you play end up here, and where characters go if they get exhausted. There doesn't appear to be a limit to how many cards you can put here.

The Commander Zone. Here the three Commanders you have chosen begin every game. Commanders can activate any special abilities at any time, and when you pay their price they can be moved directly to the Defense, Assault or Support Zones as if they have Haste.

The Health and Morale bar. Winning or Losing depends on if either of these bars hit zero or less.

The Assault Zone. Here characters are generally put to assault the Health bar.

The Defense Zone. Here characters are generally put to protect the Health bar.

Your Hand. You draw a card a turn and it is displayed here. You can have a max of eight cards in hand otherwise you must discard.

The Trading Post. You can use it as many times as you have Resources. It's functions are as follows:

Cycle - Pay 3 Resources to shuffle one card from your hand into your deck, and draw a card.

Draw - Pay 5 Resources to draw a card.

Power-Up - Pay 9 Resources to increase your base Resources by 1. This is one of the few ways to increase you Resources above 10.

The Undo button. This allows you to replan your moves prior to hitting the End Turn button. Trading Post actions cannot be undone.

Playing a Game

There are plenty of different ways to play a game in Infinity Wars and the rules below can change anything from what rarity of cards you and your opponent are allowed in your deck to how quickly a game progresses. Typically you will find people play Standard as it is the most challenging for your ability to build a deck as well as handle an opponent’s strategies. Below is a break down on each of the different modes and game styles than can be played.

Game Speeds

These rules affect the cadence of the game. Determining how quickly you get resources to play your cards, or how much health and moral you have. They don’t affect deck rules at all.

Standard

Both players start with 100 health and 100 morale.

Each turn both players get 1 Resource and Draw 1 card.

Resource cap at 10 unless you use characters, abilities or the Trading Post to increase the cap.

Hyper

Both players start with 100 health and 100 morale.

Each turn both players get 2 Resources and Draw 2 cards.

Resource cap at 10 unless you use characters, abilities or the Trading Post to increase the cap.

Epic

Both players start with 200 health and 200 morale.

Each turn both players get 1 Resource and Draw 1 card.

Resources do not have a cap.

Game Modes

Only two modes in this category right now and they are the different games that can be played right now.

Normal

Select any deck in your pool so long as it follows legal guidelines.

Has at least 40 cards.

3 Commanders.

The deck and Commanders must not contain cards that exceed the purity requires that the Commanders set.

3 identical card maximum, unless an unlimited card.

Merged

Both players’ decks are combined allowing for an even playing field with no card advantages.

3 Commanders that you choose at the start of the game from a pool of both deck’s Commanders.

No restrictions on purity. You can play whatever you happen to draw.

Game Formats

These rules restrict what you and your opponent can have in your deck but otherwise adhere to Normal Rulebook guidelines.

Normal

All cards can be played according to Standard Rulebook guidelines above.

Singleton

Players can only have one copy of a card in their deck.

Pauper

Decks are restricted to using only Common and Uncommon rarity cards.

Tournament

Decks are played according to regular Rulebook guidelines and restrict decks from containing any cards from unreleased sets until the full set is officially released.

Ranked

Ranked Games use the Tournament format, omitting any cards that are part of unreleased sets or non-purchasable cards. Playing Ranked games will affect your personal Ranking.

Draft/Rift Running

Drafting requires you to spend 1,000 IP or 50 LP (about .35 USD) and to be level 5 in order to participate. This mode allows you to pick 3 Commanders and 40 cards one at a time from a 4 card pool. You are then pitted against other Arena runners in a game that tests your ability to build a solid deck from a random draw of cards, and a little bit of luck.

The rewards you get for Rift Running are based on how many wins you get. One to four wins will give you a bit of your initial IP investment. Four to Five wins will get you about 1,000 IP which allows you to break even and play another game for the potential of a long streak of Rift Runs. Beyond this is a scaling system that gives you more IP and a higher chance to get cards with your IP reward.

At the end of the Rift you have the ability to purchase your Drafted deck. Deck purchasing starts at about 35k IP and an equivalent amount of LP of around $10. The price of the deck is decreased based on the amount of games you've played in the run, and can go all the way down to being free.

If you have any more questions you can always head over to the official forums at www.lightmare.com.au/forum/ where many will likely answer any immediate questions you might have. Then head on over to www.infinitywarsgame.com to sign up with the code 338ED to get yourself into the beta today!